Soapbox: Thanksgiving is a liberal holiday that says 'we're in it together'

Nov. 27, 2013

Dick Heyman

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I love Thanksgiving! I love roasting the turkey myself. I start early in the day and make an in-bird stuffing loosely based on my mother’s recipe. I love the way it fills the house with a fine aroma. I love serving to others and seeing them enjoy it. We often have English-as-a-foreign-language students, and I love introducing them to the holiday. It is also important to me to stop and think about what I have to be thankful about. It is about sharing as everyone pitches in to bring their favorite dish. We cook as a community.

The underpinnings of this holiday are philosophical and very relevant to the politics that we need to deal with today. Make no mistake about it, it’s a holiday proclaiming that we are all in this together. That used to be understood without comment throughout the U.S. Today, that has become rather left wing, as the right wing is all about “I did it myself” and denies the interconnectedness of the community. Basically, the government is an expression of our collective will and our agreement to live by the agreement (laws) of our community.

Thanksgiving is very much about sharing and helping one another. The local tribes prevented the Pilgrims from starvation, helped them with farming, fishing and hunting. If you can share your Thanksgiving with a stranger, that makes it mean more even today.

Another rather political aspect is that it is a celebration of immigrants. Since the Pilgrims had no immigration documents, I guess it is celebrating “illegal aliens.” Actually, all of the Founding Fathers were illegal aliens, certainly from the point of view of the Native Americans. The great President Franklin Roosevelt, himself a descendant of the early colonists, caused a stir at a gathering of the Daughters of the American Revolution by addressing the audience as “fellow immigrants.” Of course, the DAR stopped inviting presidents after that.

The Pilgrims fled from countries that had state religions, as they were not Catholic, Anglican or of the majority Protestants. The right wing today, which controls the Republican Party, wants to teach its form of Christianity in our schools (probably nothing near what the Pilgrims practiced). Some of them want to make (their form of) Christianity the official religion of the country. They oppose other religions building churches if the churches are called mosques.

So to recap, Thanksgiving is a celebration of community, communalism and sharing. It’s also about freedom to worship differently from other Americans. It’s the antithesis of “everyone for himself” and celebrates both freedom and immigration. It’s about thankfulness and change. It’s about helping those in need. It’s a liberal holiday. It’s about giving second helpings lovingly to “takers.”